Emony

“Where… where are we?” Emony asked, shocked, as his eyes adapted to the suddenly weaker light and he saw the pale moon rising above the endless fields of wheat spreading before him. “This isn’t… There were no fields… Are we still in the north?”

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Aylard vomiting behind him, and Tiphaine, still wrapped up in her tail. For a moment, he thought he also saw a shiny door there next to them, but it was gone as soon as the thought crossed his mind.

“Gross,” irked Lenah, running over and hiding behind Emony, watching the man puke. “But normal. Don’t worry, Tiphaine. Humans have a weaker constitution than we do, it always happens.”

She was eyeing Emony as she said that last bit. He almost took offense.

Luckily, though, he felt fine. He nodded. “So, where are we?”

“Just west of Terrena, in Hewlet’s range. It’s the closest spot I’ve got to Levara.”

“Where is my horse?” grumbled Aylard hoarsely, struggling to free himself from Tiphaine’s tail, standing up and abruptly tripping over nothing and falling again.

“You’re screwed, Aylard. Just let Tiphaine carry you. The horse is a couple hundred miles away.”

“Oh, no. Please, no.”

“So, this is teleportation. I wasn’t ready for it the first time, and it’s no different the second,” exclaimed Tiphaine, gingerly wrapping herself around the human again.

“Well, get used to it. I feel like hanging around you guys for a bit, but I have no intention of walking unnecessarily. And I hate hiking in heels,” Lenah said.

“So, conjure up something else. You obviously can.”

Lenah’s face contorted as if Emony had just said something obscenely foolish. He decided to shrug it off and stay quiet – she knew what he thought, anyway.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “Now carry me. I’ve brought us three quarters of the way there, the least you could do is cover the rest.”

“You’re kidding, right? What are you, a hundred and twelve?”

The witch grimaced and beckoned to him with her finger. In an instant, gravity began pulling in a different direction, and he was shooting toward her in freefall. Then he stopped, barely catching himself in front of her, crouching on the ground. She climbed onto his shoulders like she had planned it.

At least she wasn’t heavy, Emony thought. She was certainly lighter than Tiphaine, what with her massive, long tail.

Lenah lightly punched the top of his head, apparently having heard the thought. He’d have to be careful, lest she tattle on him. She’d done so many times in the past.

“Fine, then. Let’s go. Which way? Of course, you’re going to squirm around. Come on, this is serious, Lenah. Lives depend on it.

You already said we can’t save those people in Palehome – let’s not add to the pile.”

Hearing that thought, at least, she stopped messing around for a bit.

2

Aulduyen

He had waited long enough.

Three days were given to Verena’s pets to report back any sign of the importance of the village of barbarians up on the mountain, and the man-siren had then said the only place of interest was Gull’s Landing, five leagues away, by the frozen sea.

So why wait another day? His queen was waiting for him somewhere out there, and he knew what he had to do to get closer to retrieving her.

Verena had asked him to be patient, to wait for the pets to return from their trip, but that would be pointless. Who knew if they would return in the first place, fearful as they were of his power? Their voices had trembled when they spoke to him, as if he was some dreadful monster. He was not, of course. He had been forced into all of this. All he wanted was his queen.

But now was not the time for mercy. It was time to act. He’d gathered enough strength to bring forth rain again – and with it, the army could make their way to the snows of the mountain, where the solid water could likely sustain them just as the lake did.

Three days of a human march separated him from the nearest source of thralls – he and the puppets he already had could make it there in two. And it was time to do just that. It was bad enough that he couldn’t start with Coldbarrow, but his queen would without a doubt be mournful if he did, caring as she was. She would pity even the cowards that had turned their backs on her as she was captured to be executed. No doubt she would pity those barbarians, too, but he still had to move forward.

After she’d return to him, he would right a hundred wrongs for every one that he committed. No, better a thousand. Perhaps that would appease her, if only a little – but thinking of such things now was pointless. Now he had to be cruel, he had to commit those wrongs.

Aulduyen clutched the pearl-laced locket that Imarah had worn on their wedding day. A vision appeared before him – her face, breaking the clear water’s surface in that beautiful moment when she said “I do”. It was distorted only by the minute flaws of his memory. She was perfect, he knew. She was gazing into his eyes with such happiness she could fill the world with it.

If only time had stopped in that moment.

“I do this for you!” he shouted, staring at her empty spot on the sandy bed they used to share. “Oh, I know… You were afraid of this part of me, I know it! That’s why you sang to me so beautifully, to shine a light upon my blackened soul! But without you, my queen… I’m sorry. Black is the only color I know.”

He carefully put down the locket upon the spot where she’d laid her head, filling his own with songs of love, the songs he’d been so desperate to hear.

Black tears streaming out of his eyes and tainting the water, he kneeled before the bed one last time before he went to war. “But the black, too, must serve its purpose. You understand, don’t you? Love must prevail, my queen. I must have you back.”

Two sunsets later, it was the children playing with their dogs outside the wooden village palisade that were the first to spot them. They were dressed in thick furs to keep the cold at bay, happily running around with their pets to keep warm.

Aulduyen imagined they must have been a truly horrific sight, a thousand skeletons and rotting corpses barreling up the snowy mountain towards them with swords in their hands.

The kids began running, their short legs barely taller than the snow, their dogs barking wildly in fear ahead of them, trying to drag them away. Only two out of the fourteen made it behind the frozen walls. The brave men at the gate, fearfully shouting as they were, had waited for them, at least, before closing it.

But it brought no safety.

Aulduyen called forth his power, and from the churning, dark sky above the mountain, a burst of lightning descended to the ground, smashing through the frosted wood and throwing the men who guarded it to the ground, clutching their burned limbs and howling in the pain.

But such pain is nothing, compared to what I endure, he thought. Still, pain was pain, and his queen would not want him to inflict it without purpose. With a swing of his great sword, he struck the ground and launched himself into the air, soaring towards them like a comet. He sliced apart the men and the huts behind them as he landed, and then, only moments later, the puppets were all around them.

Streaming over the collapsed gate, the corpses surged in all directions, as per his orders, attacking every living thing in sight, overpowering them with the strength that was brought to them by strings of magic and water.

Walls, houses and barricades were being shattered everywhere he looked, the shields of warriors falling as the men died, blood staining the snow. Panicked screaming of every variety sounded over the thralls’ rampage, overpowered only by the rolling of the thunder overhead.

Chaos quickly consumed the battlefield. After surveying the carnage for a few minutes, Aulduyen noticed the living held strong in a single spot, destroying his thralls with battleaxes and hammers when they came close. Aulduyen had them stay away and finish off the other survivors instead. He’d not lose his queen’s soldiers for nothing.

Seeing the dead stop charging towards them for a moment, the three men, protecting a woman and child, ran towards a small building by the palisade. A stable, by the look of it. They trembled in fear as they noticed him approach. One of them grabbed a bow from the ground and loosed arrow after arrow in his direction. Four, he avoided, as it was no trouble to do so, another two he swatted away with his hand, the last, he let pierce his heart.

The men continued gazing upon him in terror as he approached them.

“Dad!” the child screamed, already up on the horse with the woman. That one word, he understood. One of the men was shouting something back in that foreign language of theirs. Aulduyen stopped and stood patiently before them in the snow, grasping his sword and planting it in the ground before taking the arrow out of his heart, letting them have their precious moment.

The apparent father, seeing him, turned to face him suddenly after shouting something to the woman and child. “Please,” he begged in Aulduyen’s tongue, in a harsh accent his mind found distasteful. “Please. Them… Free.”

Then, as the two other men joined the first with hammers and axes in hand, the woman and child attempted to gallop away. Aulduyen took up his sword again.

The village had been completely consumed by his puppets within a half-hour. A fire had started, spilling forth from the fallen torches and cooking pots strewn about the settlement before reaching the huts. The frosted wood was crackling and hissing, blackening with every passing second. The thatch roofs and tents threw flames high in the air, warming the cold mountain. The screaming had stopped. He had the thralls bring the dead to him, laying them to rest on the snow for a few moments before their bodies could be used.

Looking over the corpses, he saw that one – the woman, the one that had tried to escape with her child, had not yet been taken by oblivion. She was gurgling blood, her stomach split open where his sword had slashed through her. She was in pain – but it would only be seconds now.

He knelt beside her and gently brushed away her hair from her eyes, attempting to comfort her in her last moments.

“Imarah?! Is that you?!” he suddenly shouted, seeing her eyes.

Her eyes – they had that color. But no… No. The shape was wrong, and everything else was too. She was not his queen. Still – she had her eyes.

“Rest, woman,” he said softly, calming himself. “Worry not, death comes for you all. With your sacrifice, a queen without compare shall be freed from her gilded cage. Now go. Go and join your son.”

Her eyes were starting to flitter shut. He did not know if she had understood him. Probably not – but in any case, she was gone. Aulduyen stood up and walked away, towards the center of the pile of corpses. He lifted his hands towards the stormy sky.

“Arise!”